Play Dead
by Saint Dragon Girl
Summary: Xelloss x Filia. Songfic. In a tavern at night, Xelloss considers Filia.


Play Dead

_Author's Note_: Xelloss has two seemingly contradictory aspects to his personality: the teasing, playful side, and the dark, monstrous side. I explore just a bit of that darkness in this story. **This story is Xelloss x Filia**. Comments and constructive criticism (as opposed to flames) are both welcomed and requested. ^_^ I haven't seen many episodes of TRY, so please forgive me if Filia's characterization is a little off. But I purposely made her a little out-of-it in this fic, due to too much drink. ^_^   
Xelloss, Filia, and Slayers are trademarks of Software Sculptors in the US. I do not claim ownership of these characters, and no infringement is intended. "Play Dead"is from Bjork's album, Debut. 

I never thought I would write a songfic, but it's happened after all. 

*********************** 

**PLAY DEAD**   
A songfic by Saint Dragon Girl (aka Valkyrie) 

In a swirl of gold she spins across the tavern floor, tall, slender, graceful. Her cheeks reddened from a little too much brandy, she wears a smile Xelloss sees for the first time: friendly, playful, beckoning. She tugs at the shadowy fabric of his cloak.   
"Quit grinning and dance!" Filia says to him sternly, then laughs in a crystal voice, emotions shifting like candlelight in a dark window. A cat watching a firefly, Xelloss is helplessly transfixed on the flitting, golden light of her. 

_Darling stop confusing me   
With your wishful thinking   
Hopeful embraces   
Don't you understand?_

Filia dances around him, eyes bright with naked adoration, and Xelloss feels none of the delicious hate and frustration she usually emanates. He tastes something sweeter, a new emotion that he has never known from her, something hidden in the center of her heart before, only now brought into the open by strong drink. As she gazes up at him fearlessly, staring openly, then looks away shyly as a young girl, a flavor like the most perfect, honeyed delicacy pervades his senses. He wonders how it would be to dine on that sweetness forever, to never taste the bitterness of his own dread again.   
Are lovers tender with each other? Can they kiss without the foreboding of rape? Can they rest in each other's arms without using or feeling used? Or fearing that the touch was a prelude to death?   
The world he lives in isn't Filia's world. Her world shines bright with spindles of yellow gold, his is wrapped in the suffocating cobwebs of struggle. The strong oppressing the weak, guarding against being usurped by the lesser, who must be stamped out, lest they grow in strength.   
Is that living? 

_I have to go through this   
I belong to here where   
No-one cares and no-one loves   
No light no air to live in_

She winds slender arms around his neck, her smile vanishes, replaced by slightly parted lips and softly panted breaths. Xelloss knows that even drunk she must realize he can destroy her in a whisper, in a movement. Yet she holds herself close, on the verge of destruction.   
Xelloss wonders at such trust, innocence that knows no fear, even of the slayer of her people. Do all lovers trust like this? Or is betrayal inevitable? Would those soft, eager eyes become full of derision and contempt when his impoverished mazoku's soul was laid bare before her? 

_A place called hate   
The city of fear   
I play dead   
It stops the hurting_

_No_, he thinks as she looses him, floating away like a butterfly between other dancing patrons. _Betrayal is necessary for survival_. That knowledge saves him from being torn to pieces by ambitious peers. Betrayal is inevitable. 

_I play dead   
And the hurting stops   
It's sometimes just like sleeping   
Curling up inside my private tortures_

Then in one sunny movement, Filia returns to him, and singing his name, draws him close, draws her lips to his, and in one golden moment, captures his fears in a kiss. Xelloss encircles her waist with his hands, memorizing the feel of her, each trustful caress imprinting itself in his mind.   
"Is that a real smile?" she teases, pulling away. Xelloss frees her with reluctant hands, watching her splendid light dance away again.   
She's drunk. She'll regret this in the morning, if she remembers. But he holds her in a corner of his dark heart, to warm himself in the chilling wind of his hateful existence. Smiling at this fresh memory, he surrenders himself to solitude again, and resigns his heart to suffering. 

_ I nestle into pain   
Hug suffering   
Caress every ache   
I play dead,   
It stops the hurting. _


End file.
